I would be all over the race sets for my daughter, except that with the changes LEGO has made to the characters, they lost my daughter's interest. She really loved the characters they had already developed (LEGO sets, cartoons, etc.) Her attitude is kind of like she's lost a friend. I was shocked when I recently took her to the LEGO store for her birthday and she didn't want a single friends set. She ended up getting an older set. She's only 10, so I guess we'll see what happens in the next year or so when the last of the previous sets hit EOL.
I tried to explain the character diversity LEGO was going for, but my daughter didn't see it that way. She had fallen in love with the previous characters. Now they're all gone. So as of right now, LEGO has lost my daughter's interest in the entire friends theme.